Trump to nominate ex-banker Muzinich to top Treasury role

President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Wall Street banker Justin Muzinich to be deputy secretary of the Treasury, a person familiar with the matter said.

Muzinich, currently a counselor to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would formally take on the No. 2 role if he is confirmed by the Senate. Initially, Mnuchin appeared unlikely to select a deputy after a pair of candidates did not work out.

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Brian Brooks, a former Mnuchin colleague at OneWest Financial who is now at Fannie Mae, withdrew his name from consideration late last year. And Mnuchin’s initial selection, Goldman Sachs banker Jim Donovan, withdrew over family concerns.

After Brooks withdrew, a Treasury spokesman said the department had enough full-time staff and that Mnuchin would not fill the deputy role. But Mnuchin later changed his mind, a person familiar with the matter said, deciding he needed a full-time deputy to run the department day-to-day while he is traveling or otherwise occupied in high-level matters.

Muzinich, a former Morgan Stanley banker and an adviser to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, has spent most of his time at Treasury focused on the tax overhaul that Trump signed last year. As deputy secretary, he’s expected to focus on implementation of the tax plan, housing finance reform, international affairs and other key Treasury agenda items.

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Muzinich, who holds an MBA from Harvard and a law degree from Yale, worked at Morgan Stanley before serving as president of Muzinich and Co., an investment firm founded by his father. He worked as an informal adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign and then for Bush in the 2016 election cycle.

He helped shepherd the tax plan on Capitol Hill along with former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and senior NEC staffer Shahira Knight, among others. He’s highly regarded by both Treasury and the West Wing, something not always true of current Treasury staff members.

“Justin is just really great and I’ve got a lot of respect and regard for him,” a former senior White House official said of Muzinich. “What made him really effective on tax reform was that’s he smart and a quick learner and he knows what he doesn’t know and is willing to ask questions and that’s not something you see all the time, especially from former Wall Street people.”